


I've Been Drowning All These Years

by terrible_titles



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, And lots of comfort, Angst, Biblical Reinterpretation, Book of Job, Child Death, Children's Crusades, Crying, Fluff, Historical Inaccuracy, History, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Look I'm really into comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pope Joan - Freeform, That missing bus scene, Weddings, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 17:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20362528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terrible_titles/pseuds/terrible_titles
Summary: The Flood scared Aziraphale into submission. Or rebellion. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.Or, five times Crowley comforts Aziraphale throughout history, plus one where Aziraphale comforts Crowley.





	I've Been Drowning All These Years

**The Story of Job**

There are a lot of mistakes in the Bible, because the Bible was written, for the most part, by humans, and humans didn’t understand many of the things they thought they did. One of the more outlandish mistakes was attributing the conversation about Job to God and Satan. 

Now, it wasn’t for Aziraphale to say whether or not the Almighty and Lucifer were on speaking terms in that part of their relationship, or if either had any personal interest in Job (he was willing to bet no on the last one, though). 

But it wasn’t Satan who was wandering around Job’s piece of the world that day, and it wasn’t God who sat contentedly watching over him.

“Hey, Aziraphale,” said a demon who was now, abruptly, standing next to the angel where a second before he hadn’t been, and Aziraphale had to restrain himself from startling. 

“Crawly.” He looked to his side, then flitted his eyes nervously away, aware that the demon had been experimenting with the fashions lately and he was now saddled in an oddly-colored fringe skirt that left little to the imagination. “What are you doing here?”

He was annoyed at having his basking interrupted. There wasn’t a lot of love to cling to during these post-Flood times, but Job was unique, capable of producing a great deal of it. Enough for a lonely angel to get by, anyway. 

“Oh, you know.” Crawly gestured vaguely. “Just been walking around a bit, stretching my legs. Seeing what all there is to see. This guy, for instance.” 

Job wasn’t much to look at, but Aziraphale was quite proud of the man. An upstanding citizen, that one. No matter how successful he’d gotten, Job never forgot to pay his dues to the Woman in Charge, and Aziraphale thought God quite liked that because there hadn’t been any signs from Upstairs that She was getting ready to wipe out the population again. (Sure, She had promised no floods, but there were plenty of other “natural” disasters which could be escalated to an Earth-wide scale, Aziraphale had learned.) 

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said, not quite hiding his affection. “A lovely man, isn’t he? Very doting father, kind to his servants, faithful to his mate. And quite devoted, you know.” The angel nodded, looking Up. 

“Oh, sure, sure. But.” Crawley paused, contemplative, then shook his head. “Well, never mind.”

Aziraphale turned. “No, what is it?”

Crawly’s mouth twisted into something of an apologetic grimace. “Well, it’s just. I mean, it’s cheating, isn’t it? To give a guy everything and then point to him as the epitome of devotion. Of course he’s going to be into God. It’s easy to be grateful when you have all this to be grateful for.” 

Job was gesturing his daughters inside a home much grander than the others in the area. They were all gathering for the evening meal, a tradition Job enjoyed, and he smiled warmly at his wife as the last of children came inside. The door closed behind him, but the love that radiated was a heady thing for a starved angel. 

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Aziraphale said, defensively. “I rather think it’s easier to get a big head with all this success, but Job never forgets Who’s really in charge.” 

“Ah.” Crawly paused for a long moment after the door was closed upon the family. All around the house were a variety of animals from which Job derived his family’s sustenance. The animals were really quite resilient, having regrown their population with relative ease, and with these in particular being under the care of such kind hands as Job’s, they had a lot to be grateful for as well. Benevolent masters beget benevolent masters, Aziraphale reflected with softness. 

But the niggling in Aziraphale’s mind remained, as did Crawly, who was leaning a little too close over Aziraphale’s shoulder. 

“Well, you’re probably right. This living business, I guess it’s not supposed to be a chore, after all?” Crawly continued. “S’pose to be easy.” 

Aziraphale frowned and turned. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Do you?”

“You’re trying to have me admit that God is unfair and plays favorites, and I simply won’t do it.” 

“No, no.” Crawly took a place on the rock next to Aziraphale. “I would never, Angel. My job is with those lot, not with you.” 

Aziraphale felt strongly that he should not trust the demon, but he realized he was relaxing a bit with the logic of Crawly’s argument. It was safe and comforting. Of course Crawly was here to observe the God-fearing man all the East spoke of—perhaps to take notes, find out how to prevent the growing of another. Maybe to attempt a temptation or two, as well, but Aziraphale was confident Job wouldn’t fall for it. 

Crawly had a job to do, and it didn’t include Aziraphale. 

“I just wonder,” Crawly said, scooting closer and lowering his voice. “What kind of man do you think Job here would be if he weren’t so great?”

Aziraphale sighed and shifted towards Crawly. “What does it matter? He is, and he’s happy, and God’s happy, so I’m happy.” And then, because he was a bit too smug for his own good, “I think he’d be every bit the same man as he is now. He understands the order of things. He’s a good man. A fine example of the potential of humankind.” Then, he shot Crawly a brief look, pained with guilt at his pride. He blamed it on the love. 

Crawly looked away, towards the house again, but the corner of his lips had quirked upwards just a tad. “You wouldn’t allow me to test that theory out a bit, would you?”

***

In retrospect, Aziraphale knew it was a stupid bet to make. He didn’t really understand humans then. It was debatable whether he learned much about them at all in his 6000 years. It wasn’t that he didn’t care to, but—well, he didn’t much care to. He liked looking at them, wondering about them, trying out their inventions. They were a remarkable lot. He cared about them much as pets (a concept Crawly had invented later on, and that had been the source of many disagreements with the other demons on the relative Good or Evil of having a tabby cat or wild puppy reduce your fortunes in exchange for less and less work—“It’s a long game,” he had insisted fervently.). But when it came to solving the mysteries of their souls, Aziraphale would leave that up to the One who created them to begin with. He was just there to nudge them in the right direction. 

But that day in front of Job’s allotment, Crawly must have hit a nerve and it all went wrong rather more quickly than Aziraphale thought it would. By the end of the week, most of Job’s animals were subject to thieves and disasters (“You are not to touch the camel, Crawly!”), his beautiful home was destroyed, his children were missing, and Crawly was standing beside the angel again, watching as Job monologued about God’s mercy. 

“Wow, your lot’s really got a hold on that one,” Crawly mused. 

“Yes, quite,” Aziraphale said, rocking back on his heels, pleased. He turned to the demon with a satisfied smile. “You see, God always knows what She’s doing when it comes to Her creations. She understands how to promote the best of them. It’s as I was saying all along, Job only came to his success because God knew his heart, and knew he deserved it.” 

“Well then, Angel, when you’re right, you’re right.” Crawly didn’t seem horribly put out by his loss. “And a deal is a deal, I’ll take a vacation from tempting the humans for a while.” 

“A what?” 

“A vacation.” Crawly tilted his head. “A break from work to indulge in a little sloth. I’ve recently introduced the idea among a crowd west of here. I’m hoping it catches on.” 

Aziraphale shook his head. “Idle hands. Can’t be good.”

“Rather my point. Hey.” Crawly pivoted on his heel to stand in front of Aziraphale just as the angel was about to head off. “I wonder.” 

“Enough of your wonderings. And do you know where Job’s children are? I assume, per our agreement, they are not actually dead.”

“Yes, yes.” Crawly waved his hand. “But, you see, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. Do you think our deal restrained me too much? I wasn’t to touch the man himself at all. And what makes a person despair worse than suffering inflicted upon himself?”

And that’s how Aziraphale agreed to let Crawly inflict poor Job with what turned out to be a pretty imaginative array of boils and sores. 

“_Why_ is our best human sobbing and scalping himself while surrounded by the ashes of his fields and wine his friends brought by to commiserate?” Gabriel demanded when Aziraphale submitted his report in person, back when such things were done by hand.

Aziraphale chuckled nervously, pulling on the sleeves of his angelic tunic. (Heaven was always a little behind on the uniform changes.) “You see, it’s quite an interesting story. So I thought to myself, why, God seems mightily pleased with this one here, and look at his land and his animals! I met him one day on the road and we had a lovely chat, and I told him, ‘I wouldn’t mind a camel like that, let me tell you!’ And he said to me, ‘Oh, do you think so? I was just telling my wife’—”

“Aziraphale. _Please._” Gabriel rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This is your job, and so far your performance has been—well, not quite what we’d want to see, if we’re being honest. And I don’t mind telling you that we could be looking at another disaster on the scale of the Flood if we don’t start showing results. That looks poorly on all of us.” 

Aziraphale grasped the fabric at his elbows, pulling them in to suppress a shudder. “Right, no, I agree completely, and I think She’ll be even more pleased to see how well the humans hold up under pressure. If we make an example of this one showing exemplary devotion under such duress—”

“You think too much,” Gabriel said, turning on his heel already. “Just stick to the script. And _fix this._” 

“Right. Absolutely. Stick to the script. I can do that!” But Gabriel was out of earshot by then. 

***

It turns out that once something has started in one direction, it can be rather difficult to turn it around. 

“Come, come, Elihu!” Eliphaz called to Aziraphale when the angel strode up in his miracle’d disguise. Elphaz was already well on his way to tipsy. It wasn’t long after the humans set out from the Garden of Eden that they’d invented various methods of inebriation. Aziraphale had to admit a certain fondness for some of it, but Eliphaz’s concoction was more bitter than most. Still, the angel’s day had been long, and so he sat on a log in the middle of a field facing a sobbing, balding, pock-marked Job and drank heavily from Eliphaz’s cup. 

“I’ve seen you—er—have run into a bit of trouble,” Aziraphale tried, once a small hit of bravery was garnered from his drink. He wasn’t sure Job could hear him over his own sobbing, but he continued. “Quite—quite unfortunate, to hear the news of that fine camel of yours. And your children of course. Surely they can—er—be found?”

“Little hope of that,” Bildad said, well past tipsy. “Bet they’ve been sacked by those nasty buggers who burned down his fields.”

“Must be in a bad way with the Almighty, friend,” Zophar agreed, reaching over to pat Job on the knee. “What do you think it was?”

Job moved his hands from his reddened face and stared at Zophar. “I don’t know!” he wailed. “How have I insulted God?” He turned to Aziraphale, who could only mouth a “Who, me?” in return. Then, to Eliphaz, “What have I done that you lot have not also taken part in? I haven’t sinned! How is this justice?”

“Must have stepped in something we didn’t know about,” Bildad slurred. “Does She like camels, do you think? Always said that camel was trouble. And that son of yours, Jemima, he can be a right prick, yeah?”

Job gasped another sob and turned once more to Elihu, as if pleading. “How can I love a god who can change a man’s fortunes on such a small whim? Who treats me and mine as if we don’t matter?”

Zophar leaned over to Aziraphale. “The man has to be lying about something he did. Know what?”

Aziraphale shook his head hurriedly, but he felt something in the region of his stomach clench painfully, and wondered if it was Eliphaz’s wine. 

Eliphaz, as if summoned, pressed another cup in Job’s hands from which the suffering man drank mechanically, as if he weren’t aware he was doing it. “Perhaps you should just say you’re sorry, yeah? For whatever it is?”

“I’m sorry,” Job cried piteously, “but I’m not sorry for also thinking God’s a right bastard, honestly, for hurting people for no good reason.”

“Well, you can’t know, can you?” Aziraphale blurted out, and all four men stared up at him suddenly as if they weren’t sure why he was here, or how they knew him, despite the wine and a small miracle. “You can’t know what She’s thinking, or why She does things. Perhaps this is a gift; have you ever thought of it? For standing out among others as a shining beacon of faithfulness?”

“A _gift,_” Job spat. “A gift from God at this point would be to die.”

***

Aziraphale could easily miracle up some compassion and generosity from Job’s friends, and Crawly had apparently been as good as his word because the children came around again, confused about where they’d gone but no worse for the wear. 

Job moved with renewed grace and dignity, making his offerings, praising Her name. Gabriel was pleased the crisis had been averted. But Aziraphale couldn’t shake the feeling he saw in the man that something of that pillar of stone had crumbled. The angel didn’t feel as warm as he gazed upon Job. Didn’t feel quite the strength of love he used to, as Job held his family at arm’s length, too aware they could be taken away so easily on the whim of a God he believed in, but now had no stomach for. 

On the pride of an angel he didn’t even know. 

“We’ll call that a draw, yeah?” Crawly said, then, “Oh.” 

Aziraphale didn’t even realize he was crying until Crawly’s usual playful demeanor softened down a note and the demon took a step back, like Aziraphale was suddenly poisonous. 

“You don’t have to be generous with me,” Aziraphale snapped, wiping at the liquid gathering in his eyes. “I know you used me for your games with the humans. And did a jolly good job at it, too, might I add? He’ll never be the same. Your boss must be proud.” 

“It wasn’t—” Crawly stopped short, his breath caught on something that sounded nearly like shame. One thin hand jerked up, like he wanted to touch him, but then balled into a fist and lowered again. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. 

Aziraphale turned away. He didn’t understand this crying business. Didn’t know what it was for. It just felt like leaking, in a way. Like he’d sprung a leak and it was rushing out every orifice in his face. He wiped his face on a trembling sleeve. “I won’t do this with you, Crawly. I have to protect them, you know. I can’t have you using me to cause trouble. I can’t have them _drown._ Not again.” 

Crawly’s voice, after a moment, held the barest hint of a tremor. A plea. “I didn’t know.”

The sky was fading with the day, subdued colors rushing over the fields of contented animals. (There were more than just camels, Aziraphale was sure. He’d have to learn what the humans called them eventually.) Job’s family had long been inside, enjoying their late meal together, and a demon and an angel stood horrified with dawning realization of the stakes involved here. 

**The Story of Joan**

Crowley told Aziraphale this wasn’t going to end well, but the angel didn’t listen to him. Crowley’s offerings of something akin to friendship seemed sincere, but Aziraphale would not be stupid again. He wouldn’t take Crowley’s word for anything without examining it thoroughly. The thing was, the temptation was now to reject everything Crowley said without thinking all too much about it, and he had done that here. Obviously. 

Because now there was a dead pope and thousands of lightyears of emotions between them. 

“I’m sorry,” Crowley began. 

Aziraphale held up a hand, face mostly shadowed in a corner where the moonlight refused to shine. Then he knelt next to the frail body of a dead pope, fingers in the bloodstain at the front of Joan’s robes. 

“Too late?” Crowley asked. 

Aziraphale’s jaw tightened and then he allowed a short nod. 

Joan had been an anomaly in her family. Aziraphale had seen that right away. The times were fraught with darkness—at least on this side of the planet—and Joan struggled against it. Hard. Finally, she took her parents’ deaths as an opportunity to begin disguising herself as a boy in order to gain access to circles where knowledge was not limited. Joan’s uncle was surprised to find a Jean instead of a Joan showing up in his village, but miscommunications abounded during these times and Joan was soon set up with the kind of religious and intellectual experience that was always her obsession, and one in which the angel very suddenly inserted himself. 

“She’s a fascinating conversationalist,” Aziraphale said as an excuse when Crowley’s raised eyebrow was all it took to propose the question. “I’ve been quite bored recently with this current run of things. Hardly anyone is even literate anymore, and the ones who are aren’t worth speaking to. This one has a keen mind, but soft. She’s different. Intelligent but not manipulative.” 

You’d have to be, really, to get by with what Joan had done. And get by she did, for Joan was not only quite curious and quick to learn all she could, but apt when it came to church politics as well. It was only a matter of time before Joan rose through the ranks and into the papacy so quickly she hadn’t yet developed the appropriate amount of enemies. 

That changed, however, when it became clear that Joan had a somewhat more direct connection to Heaven than normal. Not that Aziraphale could claim the distinction of being anything like a favorite in Heaven, but he was certainly out of the woods he’d been in. The Old Testament could have been renamed “Aziraphale’s Cock Ups” with little else changed, but that was in the past, and despite a few missteps and things lost in translation, it looked like the whole new Christianity plan was going to be kept alive, one way or another, even if most of the general population was kept quite in the dark about certain principles that leaned less towards Biblical interpretation and more to the church’s advantages. 

All that was to say, Aziraphale found Pope Joan and her desire for a better-taught populace to be a fresh breath of air in a darkening time. As an angel, he was naturally attracted to those who shed love in the bleakest places. And she wasn’t unaware she was chatting to an angel of the Lord—quick with secretive smile, always a bit more deferential than she had to be, when Aziraphale appeared in her library to discuss and debate the day’s readings. She was comfortable, though, in a way that many humans weren’t, and for the first time in all of human history Aziraphale found himself with a human friend. 

Joan wasn’t overly discreet about it, either. She thought it earned her a certain amount of credibility among the hierarchies of the church who were a bit grumbly about pope elected so young. She had quite a tenure ahead of her, after all. 

But she didn’t count on the jealousy. 

“Barely more than a year, and they killed her,” Crowley said, clucking his tongue.

“Beastly,” Aziraphale agreed, a hint of ice threading through his voice. 

“Hey, Angel.” Crowley stepped forward, surprised to find he was hesitant. “I hadn’t known you to get so close to a human before. You know they die, right? That’s just what happens.” 

“I _know,_ Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “But she was young. She had more to experience, and it was ripped away from her. She was cheated.” He lifted his eyes to the demon, feeling the ice harden within him, gripping his heart with its frozen hand. “If I find that you had something to do with this…”

Crowley raised his hands. “Absolutely not. Wouldn’t have dreamt it. I liked the kid, really. She had a lot of potential for disruption, shaking up those old pillars of faith. The quiet ones always do. Who knows what could have happened with her in charge? She was fine in my book. That’s why I told you, as soon as I felt what happened. I promise. As soon as I knew.”

He barely listened to Crowley’s babbling, as the door to the bed chambers creaked open; behind it, a hushed murmur of voices. A trio of men with heads bent carefully towards each other, not registering the angel’s presence despite his complete lack of disguising it. Aziraphale rose to greet them, quite calmly, hands folded in front of him, head leveled in their direction, as if he could look into each of their eyes at once. 

“Which one of you did it?”

The alarm that had taken the men at Aziraphale’s presence was broken with the middle one’s painful attempts to deflect. “Us, sir? What of you? What has been done here? Why, the pope is murdered!”

Crowley sunk back into the shadows to watch, unnoticed, as Aziraphale began to emit a small glow. He’d never seen the angel’s divinity, not even the fraction that he was showing now, and if the demon knew what was good for him, he’d get out now. 

“Tell me,” Aziraphale managed between gritted teeth, “who took this man. Who dared play God and take him?” 

One of the smarter men asked again, “Who _are_ you?” with a burgeoning recognition that he was dealing with something other-worldly. 

“The angel,” the other hissed. “Oh dear Lord, it’s the angel, the one to whom Jean spoke.” And as he fell to his knees, Aziraphale’s light flared larger with the supplication. “It was Christophe!” He pointed to the first man. 

“I may have wielded the knife, but I was not the one who has spent the past year plotting to take his place!” Christophe shouted down to the supplicant. 

The second man was backing away, towards the door, but Aziraphale snapped it shut with a thought. 

“No one leaves here until I am satisfied.”

And the second man began to pray under his breath. 

“Oh.” Aziraphale looked up at him with a pained smile. “My dear. You’re complicit in the death of one of God’s own chosen. Who do you think will listen to you now?” He took a step past the shaking supplicant and Christophe, and tilted his head, the flare of light growing strong around a face twisted into something horrible. He remembered what love was in heaven, all those empty angels, filled with a holy affection so distant and cruel. He surrounded himself in that now, warm, unyielding. He found there was no barrier between it and his rage, just a funnel from here to there. 

“Don’t,” Crowley whispered from his corner, hunched over now, and Aziraphale heard how his throat barely managed to rasp out the words. “Aziraphale. Angel. Don’t do it.” He forced his eyes open, winced with the pain of Aziraphale’s radiance. “Joan wouldn’t want that. Would she? She wouldn’t want you to pervert your holiness for personal vengeance.” 

“You don’t know anything about her,” Aziraphale hissed. 

“What?” Crowley managed, and some distant part of Aziraphale was horrified that he was hurting the demon irrevocably. “Of course I do. You think you were the only bored occult being here, Angel?”

“I loved her,” Aziraphale said, his light—his love and rage—so piercingly golden almost nothing seemed to exist outside of it. “She was so clever, but she didn’t understand Her. Not as I do.” 

At Aziraphale’s steadily growing glow, Crowley reached his hands out to grasp helplessly at the stones. “What do you understand?” His voice was rising in desperate panic. “You think you won’t Fall for this? If Joan loved you as you loved her, then she wouldn’t have wanted you to go this far. She wouldn’t want you to kill them. Leave the church to handle their own.” 

“The church will do nothing!” A roar, almost deafening. “It is a perverted mass of intellectual hoarding, filled with greedy men perpetuating ignorance and exploiting it for their own gain, twisting Her into something shameful for their base purposes.” 

“Then they are not worth you, Angel!” Crowley shouted. “Don’t let them have you!” 

Christophe was trying and failing to budge the door an inch. The second man was crying. The supplicant had frozen, gazing upwards at Aziraphale in a fear Crowley would have received commendations for had he been the one to inspire it. 

Aziraphale closed his eyes. Let his light fade, just a hair. Turned back to the cowering men. 

“For all his cleverness, Jean never saw your betrayal coming. He was too young. Barely a child. He had so much potential, so much vision. He could have changed your church, could have helped you know God again. Could have helped—” Here, the angel stumbled over the word. 

_Me_, Aziraphale realized. 

He cleared his throat past the raw pain lodged in it now. “I saw in him more than an intellectual equal, but a spiritual one. We reached heights of new understanding together. You will fail to ever know them, because you have cut his life short on the basis of such a disgustingly human notion of jealousy. And so now you will never have a chance to know Her love.” 

The supplicant opened his mouth. Licked his lips. Swallowed. Then tried again, “Please have mercy on we such pitiful, ignorant creatures.”

And briefly, Aziraphale’s face flared once more. Crowley winced away from it, squeezing his eyes shut, and like a faded memory, Aziraphale could see him there in heaven, gold-flecked tears and blood rapidly changing to the stark red of the Fallen. The fire of angelic swords, the gnashing teeth of the Hellhounds. Maybe Crowley saw that too, because he was trembling, nearly as cowed as the humans. 

“Know this,” Aziraphale said, his voice rich with confidence he probably shouldn’t claim to have, “God will not forgive you.” Then he breathed and allowed himself to fade back into his human shape, for Crowley’s sake. “And I will never forgive you.” 

Crowley’s knees were hunched up almost his face, curled nearly into a ball now, but his arms loosened around them when he sensed the danger was coming to an end. “Aziraphale,” he breathed.

Joan would think it humorous, her murderers saved for the life of a demon. 

Crowley should have left. He needn’t have subjected himself to an angel’s divine wrath. He could have left, and Aziraphale could have killed these humans like they deserved. But he couldn’t bring himself to be angry about it anymore. 

No more righteous fury, no more aching love. Aziraphale’s tears were not golden. They were simple wet human tears, the bothersome kind, and he was just crying, looking around the room helplessly, because he was a fool who’d lost his friend to a random, senseless act of violence. And he couldn’t get her back with all the smiting in the heavens. 

Later, Crowley sat next to Aziraphale on a stone wall outside the castle. They watched the landscape brighten steadily with a new day, and finally Aziraphale began to speak. He told told Crowley all the stories about Joan he could think of—about her bravery, her treachery, her ideas, and how she might have changed the world. And, of course, about all the ways he failed to protect her. Failed to even realize she needed it. 

(He would protect her in death, though. They’d find out who she was, and they’d try to slay her all over again; and sometimes it would work, and sometimes he’d confuse enough people through the rabbit trails of false evidence that the historians would throw up their hands and not bother. He’d learn that trick from Crowley, eventually. He was never sure of the point, besides to make some trouble in her name, but it was more satisfying than he’d like to admit.) 

But now. Now. Crowley flexed his hand between them a few times, dropped it back, and then finally allowed himself to curve his long fingers around Aziraphale’s knee. They were cool with the ending night. Aziraphale startled, paused in the midst of a story where Joan was gaining the upper hand in an argument with an arrogant tutor, but he didn’t pull away. 

They looked at each other, and then Aziraphale finished the story. 

**The Story of Petyr**

Nicholas of Cologne, one of the too-young leaders of the Children’s Crusades, would later be called the Pied Piper for Hamelin for his terrifying charisma, his ability to inspire so many youth and peasants to abandon their families and work so they could take up arms, take back the Holy Land, or some such nonsense. 

Later, Aziraphale would reflect that Nicholas’ younger brother would have been even more deserving of that title, had he been given the chance. 

“You’re the angel, right?” Petyr’s brown eyes were keen and searching. He shouldn’t even be seeing Aziraphale right now, as the angel hadn’t meant to be seen. He was only watching Nicholas’ homestead, wondering if they family knew their oldest son was dead now, strung out starved and frozen in the snow that lay like heavy blankets over the Alps.

“I am,” Aziraphale answered, surprised. Petyr was slender, like his brother, though their father was of a strong, hardy stock. Both boys carried wispy blonde hair on the crowns of their head, though Nicholas’ had been carefully shorn short for the battles he had been so prepared to fight whereas Petyr’s was a touch long and curled at the neck. 

“Are you here to tell us Nicholas failed?” Petyr asked. He swung himself upward on the fence around their farm and dangled his feet childishly. “That he’s dead? I expect not enough faith was the thing that did him in.”

“Maybe so,” Aziraphale mused, studying the child. He was trying too hard to appear careless, only vaguely interested. 

“You’re a bit late, you know. News has already come down about Nicholas’ defeat. There’s a whole load of angry people in the village, now they’ve realized their children aren’t coming back.” 

“Yes, I’m aware.” He’d passed by the tavern in the center of the village earlier, and instead of the usual raucous laughter, there was tense discussions, bold declarations, and a thin line close to breaking. 

“Nicholas should be glad he’s dead, then,” Petyr said, hopping down from the fence and looking upwards at Aziraphale. “He wouldn’t have wanted to come back to a town so angry. But you—you must be here for another reason.” 

Aziraphale had heard the tone before in Petyr’s brother. Nicholas was confident that his brief interaction with Aziraphale, desperately pleading with him not to start another crusade, and for Heaven’s sake, definitely not with _children_, was a sign from God. A test. She’d chosen him to lead and sent an angel down to talk to him about it. Aziraphale’s actual words fell on deaf ears. He had inadvertently given Nicholas everything he needed to start another disastrous adventure to the Holy Land. 

Now, he eyed Petyr cautiously, wondering which approach might work where the direct ones had failed. 

To be sure, he’d never understood the Crusades, beyond what he knew about the church in Joan’s time—a greedy, leering thing hiding behind grandiose declarations of God’s plans and desires with all the undeserved confidence of unruly children. When he’d asked Gabriel about it, the archangel had merely shrugged. 

(“Surely, the Lord cannot want this—this destruction and bloodshed?” Aziraphale had asked, hopefully. 

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Gabriel said, uninterestedly straightening his very out-of-date fringes. He turned to Aziraphale. “We really haven’t been given any directions one way or another. Best not to interfere in cases like these.”) 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I am here for another reason.” 

Petyr paused, and then had the decency and fortitude to look a bit shy when he asked, “For me?”

“For you,” Aziraphale agreed carefully. “But it’s not what you might think.” 

“What do you think I think?”

Talking to children had to be Michael’s punishment for that whole Gnosticism debacle. 

“I’m not sure. Why don’t I tell you what I think?” At this, Petyr nodded eagerly. “I think you have a lot of potential, Petyr, and are cleverer than is strictly good for you. And…” Aziraphale hesitated, glimpsing a toddler playing in the weeds by the house. “I think your family needs you, now that Nicholas is gone. They need someone who can pull people together. Your brother had a talent for that, but used it poorly. You have a talent for it as well, so you must be wiser.” 

Petyr ran a tongue over his teeth thoughtfully and gazed out at the midday sun, across the level fields. A wholesome earthy scent settled around them, grounding the two here in this conversation. 

“Let me think about it,” Petyr said. “What you said. I have to figure it out, don’t I? Isn’t that what you angels do, give us riddles to decipher?”

“Well, we try not to, and really, dear, I think what I’ve said is quite plain—”

“Three days!” Peter exclaimed. “That’s a good number, isn’t it? Give me three days!” And he trotted off, leaving an angel of the Lord quite baffled and mostly, exasperated. 

***

In theory, Aziraphale shouldn’t care about individual deaths, just percentages and trends on the whole, and he’d done a fair job at this since Joan. Humans died, and he had gotten well-used to that fact. Through the last few centuries especially, he’d kept his hands well out of human affairs unless directed otherwise. Some might call it numbness or disillusionment. (Crowley. Crowley called it that.) But he had been quite unbothered by Heaven, who he wasn’t sure was even reading his reports anymore, and so was able to slip unhindered into the cool darkness, watching passively, clicking his tongue at it all in slight disapproval. 

But that was before Stephen and Nicholas’ efforts, when he had quite enough of watching manipulated, deluded children starved, murdered, and sold into slavery far from their homes in the name of a vast misunderstanding. 

His attempted intercession with Nicholas had failed, but he might yet be able to save the young one.

He sighed heavily as he listened to the talk in the tavern grow harder, rent fast and encouraged by what looked like it would be a bad harvest year, where many would starve. Aziraphale drank the ale—Adelaide had made this batch, and hers was often very fine indeed. He thought briefly of attempting to restore some calm to the town, but thought it might prove to be rather difficult, given the amount of people who had lost family to Nicholas and the immense state of their dissatisfaction. It would be easier to move Petyr and his family, after all. 

And Petyr didn’t have three days, it turned out. The townspeople were rather more irked than even Aziraphale had anticipated, and irritated ale-drinkers became a street mob with a purpose alarmingly quick. 

“Nicholas has dried up this town,” Petyr said, “and I need to leave. Isn’t that right?” 

Aziraphale appeared before the blonde boy shortly before evening meal while he was finishing up his chores, very aware that a mob who had elected itself the new law enforcement in town would be at their doorstep any moment. 

Petyr shrugged. “I figured out the riddle, anyway. Turns out I didn’t need three days. I just needed faith, isn’t that right?”

“Petyr. Yes. You need to get your whole family, and—”

Petyr moved down the swept pathway towards the angel, eyes sparkling and quick with plans. “We’ll move to a new town. I’ll find followers, even more than Nicholas, and we’ll make this one work. We’ll succeed where he failed. They lost confidence in him, but I have confidence to spare.” 

“No,” Aziraphale said abruptly, and he felt his corporation struggling to contain its divinity again. Felt the light flood through him, a blessed and warm thing, fueling his frustration. “Listen to me, Petyr. Do not follow in Nicholas’ footsteps. Do not start another crusade. God does not want your suffering. God doesn’t want _anyone_ to suffer.” 

Petyr halted a few steps away, staring up at Aziraphale searchingly. He looked too much like a boy, and the angel’s heart was filled with the ache of innocence and rage at those who had so thoroughly manipulated the people as to cause this horrible brainwashing to perpetuate for _centuries_.

“Faith,” Petyr whispered. “I need to have faith.” 

Aziraphale softened. “Yes. Faith. Believe me.” 

“This is a test.” 

He froze. “No.”

Petyr’s face broke out into a grin. “It is. It’s a test. God wants me to be brave.” 

“No. No, She doesn’t,” Aziraphale begged. “She just wants you to be _alive_.”

“I’ll do this,” Petyr promised vehemently. “Your trust in me will be rewarded. I will lead God’s army. I will succeed where my brother couldn’t.”

“My dear, God doesn’t _want_ your army. Your brother was deluded—”

“We can be peaceable. Our innocence will be a draught of fresh water to those hungry for God’s salvation. My brother strayed from this path; he raised an army, but I will not. I can lead us into these foreign lands with open hearts and eyes.”

“Have you ever thought God _doesn’t care about this_?”

“I cannot be tempted!” Petyr declared. “I won’t be swayed. God’s trust in me will not be in vain.” 

“_Angels don’t tempt!_” Aziraphale yelled, then took a few breaths to calm himself. Noise in the dusty road that led up to Petyr’s family’s land. A clattering of boots, voices. Aziraphale turned back to Petyr, desperate now. The boy looked faintly curious at it. “Dear boy. Don’t do this,” he hissed. “You can leave. I can help you get away from here. Petyr. _Trust me._”

Petyr grinned. “I do.” 

Aziraphale couldn’t actually see the future, but he was intelligent and intuitive enough to see the danger of Petyr’s army. His smile was too alluring; his eyes too bright; his devotion too fervent. He could move his family away from here and destroy another village by stealing away all of their children, whispering sweet words that would draw them into destruction. Nicholas’ intent had started peaceable too, but ended in so many cold disasters Aziraphale lost count. They’d never even made it to their pointless purpose. His army had been dispersed to deaths, desertion, and slavery long before he’d lain himself down one final time in defeat. 

The miracle was right there in Aziraphale’s fingers. It would be a big one, but he could do it. The babe, Petyr’s younger siblings, his sweet mother and her hardy husband. He could move them all away to safety with a thought, and the crowd would find the homestead emptied of anybody to punish. 

But—oh, _God_, he couldn’t take any more children crying from empty bellies and wounds, being stolen away on ships. He couldn’t stomach another village emptied of its young to no purpose. He thought of Gabriel’s disinterest. Thought of the homes in the Middle East which had been razed in Her name, their works, their advancements, their creations stolen for the church’s coffers or burned. No one had heard from the Almighty in more than a millennium, and it’s not as if She’d ever been thorough in her instructions before then. 

Petyr looked toward the road; hesitancy flashed in his face, but he buried it, determined. He would not move; he would not budge. Aziraphale could spend a mortal lifetime trying to convince him, and even then he only had half a chance. In the meantime, Petyr would take another whole village. He’d do it, for a God who wasn’t even looking. 

In the end, the townspeople weren’t entirely heartless. They left the mother and her other children and didn’t burn the fields with the house. Only Petyr and his father were taken—one flailing, leaning back towards his sobbing wife; and the boy, his exterior calm, his hands steady.

***

Petyr’s desperate eyes searched the crowd and, impossibly, landed on Aziraphale. Aziraphale was sure the wide browns would be haunted and accusing, sure the boy would realize he’d been betrayed, but instead Petyr steadied. A brief smile flickered across his face; he relaxed into his bonds, and the angel realized with rising horror that the young child was _comforted_ by his presence. 

Every part of him was screaming to escape his corporation right now, flee back to Heaven and all its dull emptiness, or even to Hell and its forthright cruelty, because that had to be better than keeping a brave face and smiling gently back at a child who was about to hang from a noose. But that wouldn’t be fair, even if he found an appropriate explanation for running back into Gabriel’s arms (metaphorically, of course—Gabriel wasn’t really a hugger). 

He’d condemned the boy to death, and he was going to witness it. He was no coward. (He was, actually; he was a horrible coward, but today he wouldn’t be.) 

Crowley was somewhere in Asia, last Aziraphale heard. Europe had gotten too depressing, he claimed. But the angel wasn’t surprised when he appeared by his side as the last of villagers dispersed from their deed and Aziraphale was alone in front of the scaffold, standing vigil. The corpses would be cut down later, and he wouldn’t leave until then. 

Aziraphale didn’t look to his side for a long while, and Crowley didn’t say something like “Horrible business, that,” or “Must have been the Plan, yeah?” He didn’t say anything at all. Just stepped up beside the angel and took his hand while they both stared at the ghastly, swaying faces and empty eyes gazing back at them.

Then, Aziraphale turned to Crowley, grabbed his surcoat in fistfuls, shoved his face into Crowley’s chest, and _wailed_ like a child just emerged from the womb. It was something between a scream and a sob, and his whole body thundered with the pain swelling in his throat. Crowley nearly toppled backwards, but recovered and brought his own hands up to Aziraphale’s shoulder blades, gathering him in, giving himself entirely to however he was needed. His chin was a pressure on the top of Aziraphale’s head, like his whole body was gently folding over the angel’s, trying to encompass him. 

“I’m so sorry,” Crowley whispered, and Aziraphale thought he felt a kiss placed in his curls. Long, thin hands cupped either side of his face, still buried in the thin linen of his shirt. Aziraphale tightened his grip there, afraid Crowley would pull him away, and he couldn’t show his face. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

He didn’t know how to explain any of this to Crowley, wasn’t sure what Crowley already knew—he must know something, because he was here, after all. But it wasn’t Crowley’s fault, the Crusades, Nicholas, Gabriel, Petyr—any of it. Was never, really. This one was on him. Maybe they all were, if you got down to it.

“I can’t take it back.” Aziraphale hooked his fingers into the fabric, gasping another horrible sob. “I can’t fix this.” 

“I know, angel.” A hitch in Crowley’s voice now. 

“But I couldn’t make him see.” 

“Angel. I know.” Crowley rested his cheek in the curls now, and they were rocking with each other, base attempts at comfort. “Shh. _I know._”

“Oh, Crowley. He trusted me and _I killed him._”

Centuries later, Aziraphale would claim to have never killed anyone, to not be able to. And Crowley would pretend that was true, for both their sakes, yet be entirely unsurprised when Aziraphale faced Adam and pulled the trigger. 

**The Story of Carol**

“Hold his legs still,” Aziraphale commanded, looking up sharply at the nurse. Carol was just a girl, really, with no prior training and no stomach for this business, but a desperation to do it anyway. “You really must hold him still for this.” 

“Y—yes, sir,” the medic said, doubling the pressure on the screaming man’s calves so they couldn’t spring back up. 

Aziraphale bent down to try to look the injured man in the eyes. “You’ll be okay,” he said, gently but firmly. “I can make it okay for you, but you must calm yourself.” And he tightened the strap around the man’s thigh, because that leg was going to have to go. He might have been able to save it, but he couldn’t save everyone’s limbs; his miracles would have to be saved for more dire circumstances than this one. War had taught Aziraphale a lot he never wished to know about frivolity. 

The business was grisly, and Aziraphale _did_ use up a minor miracle to try to give the soldier a good rest, and good dreams, because they were out of the sedatives that helped with that and it didn’t look like they’d be getting another run of medical supplies up here for a while. 

Carol was pale and shaky, wisps of hair escaping her cap to cling to her sweaty forehead, so Aziraphale dismissed her for a brief two minutes while he cleaned the surgery himself. The next one was already being prepped, and he didn’t need the break. The patients waiting for them now needed help, but seconds wouldn’t make the difference between life and death now. A brief reprieve from the front. 

As he was finishing scrubbing the blood from his forearms, Carol stepped back into the room, a shade less pale, her mouth set in a tremulous and determined line, with the next patient. 

“What do we have here?” Aziraphale asked as he turned, and then stumbled backwards in disbelief. 

“A German,” the medic stammered. “I don’t—I don’t know how or why he’s—I should report this?”

But Aziraphale didn’t see a German. He saw a man with a shock of close-cropped red hair and goggles staring up at him, a lean arm stained with blood clutching his side. “I don’t know what this woman is talking about,” Crowley said, in German, and Aziraphale was awash in the dark, in the stillness of a frozen moment. 

Aziraphale stepped forward and clutched Crowley’s shoulder with no small amount of terror and frustration seeping through his hand. “Do you understand what you’re doing?” he hissed. 

“I don’t,” Crowley admitted. “Just woke up and the whole blasted world was at war, did you know it? Damn humans are going to put me out of a job. Then I figured you were in here, trying to do something about it all, but the Devil knows how you got it in your head to be _this._” He waved a careless hand to gesture towards Aziraphale’s blood-stained uniform. 

Aziraphale wiped his hands uselessly on his trousers. “Yes, well, I was quite running out of miracles doing things the old-fashioned way.” 

“But you don’t have to do this at all,” Crowley said, standing now for emphasis. Aziraphale saw he had already healed whatever wound had been in his side. “I know you don’t. You could be a—a priest or something. Bring in souls that way. Let the humans figure this part out for themselves.” He paused. “And you look bloody _awful_ in the uniform.”

The angel shook his head fervently. He couldn’t do leave the humans to their own devices. He wouldn’t do that. He didn’t know how to explain that to Crowley, but it felt too much like giving up. 

Crowley stopped in front of him. “Angel.” Aziraphale looked to his side, unable to meet his darkly goggle-d eyes, but Crowley ducked back in front of his gaze. “Angel,” he said again, and brought a newly-clean hand to stop short of his cheek, to instead drift towards his sweaty neck. “You can’t save them all.” 

Aziraphale jerked away from the touch. “I’m not trying to. You wouldn’t understand, Crowley. Please leave me to my work.” 

So Crowley did, and the young medic blinked in confusion, momentarily disoriented by the disappearance of a patient she’d brought in. 

“Must be overwork, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s go now. Can’t leave these soldiers waiting.” _No, we must patch these kids back up so they can be opened back up, over and over, like some mad and horrible present._

***

“Sir,” Carol said as they finished washing up at the sinks, “do you think there’s any sense in all this?”

Aziraphale turned tiredly to her. Her short blonde locks were freed from her cap, all in disarray, and the lines under her eyes were deep and prominent. He had hoped she wouldn’t be the type to want to talk about it all afterwards. He usually just liked to curl up with one of the Romantics and think about times that didn’t really exist. 

“No,” he said finally. 

She breathed in sharply and let loose. “Because I don’t think there is either, the more I’m here. I thought it was patriotic, you know, to volunteer out here, though my mum was awfully cross about it. But it seems just, well, you know. Awful. All these boys, just—gone. Ruined by the violence. Dying or dead. For what? I don’t even know, really.” She fidgeted with her sleeves, pulling them down around her trembling hands. “I know I’m not the brightest, but—well, I knew you’d understand, if anyone would.” 

Aziraphale watched her carefully. The backdrop of machine gun fire was the soundtrack for all of his conversations, these days, but today it felt especially hard. She was too young. They were all too young. What kind of war were they fighting, where heads of state sent their children headlong into battle to fight their petty squabbles with weapons? It had always been this way, though. Always would be. 

“Dear,” he said. “Nobody would blame you if you needed to go home.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, face suddenly pulled taut in horror. “I will not leave, when they cannot.” 

“Is it any use to suffer alongside them?” He found he said the question out loud, like there was a snake sitting right next to him feeding him the lines. 

“I don’t know,” Carol said, her voice weak. “I just feel like maybe it helps, to know they’re not alone, even if it’s unfair. Do you?” Her eyes, large and green and shining, pulled him in, sat him down, asked for something he wasn’t sure he could give anymore.

But he clapped a hand on her shoulder anyway because he’d have to try. He must always at least try. “I don’t have any wisdom for you, dear,” he said. “But I would like to listen for a while, if you would care to keep me company with some tea at the mess.” 

*** 

Day and night meant nothing to any of them out here on the front lines anymore, and so Aziraphale found himself leaving his tea with Carol in the early morning just before the sunrise. It was damp and cold, and muddy snow crunched underneath his boot. He had forgotten the season, and would have continued to conveniently not remember it, except that he heard Christmas carols rising in the distance. He paused, tilting his head, realizing that the spitting of gunfire, the whistling of bombs, the shouts and cries of incessant warfare was quite missing from his ear. Which was strange, as war never rested. 

Until now. 

Aziraphale squinted blearily into the distance. Carol stopped at his side and looked towards him, the fear in her soft eyes glowing alongside a small bit of hope, of wonder. 

“Is that…?”

“It seems to be,” Aziraphale admitted, and closed his eyes. A faint whiff of something soft, something aching, fell through the brief breeze, and it was a bit like being healed when he hadn’t known he was wounded in the first place. 

“Oi!” From their left, two soldiers in muddy fatigues stomped up to them. “Oi” wasn’t the usual military address, but Aziraphale had made it clear he wasn’t keen on the usual titles. 

“Kev!” Carol called. “What’s going on?”

“They just stopped firing and started singing,” one of the men said, nearly breaking his face with the suppressed laughter. “So we started singing right back! We give as good as we get, it’s what I say, whether bullets or carols!” 

Aziraphale moved towards the music, towards the trenches. He couldn’t help it. His heart felt so full of love and peace and wonder; he’d been starved of it for so long. “Why, how miraculous,” he murmured. Then awareness dawned on him and he sprinted for perhaps the first time in all 6000 years of his corporation’s life. 

***

Carol and the two soldiers were shortly behind him when he slid down the ladder into the trench, finding himself at once in the midst of boisterous caroling, a red-haired man in German fatigues singing off-key. The man held a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a white handkerchief in the other. 

“’Ziraphale!” Crowley slurred, standing up. “Made some lovely friends over here. This lad said you patched up his hand so well he can’t even tell it had nearly been blown off!” 

Aziraphale wasn’t that amazing of a surgeon, and Crowley knew it. He frowned disapprovingly, but the group of French soldiers around the demon had obviously been well-plied with alcohol and were not in any way wary of the German among them. 

“Hey, he wasn’t here before,” Kev said, sliding down the ladder. “What’s going on?”

Crowley waved the handkerchief. “Told these fellows if they’d hold off on the shooting we might share.” He frowned at the handkerchief, then switched to the whiskey. “This, obviously. The alcohol. I was sent over to ask, because I’m least liked among my platoon.” 

The boys burst out laughing, and even Carol, last down the ladder, snickered behind her hand. 

“So what do you say, then? A cease-fire so we can all get drunk for Christmas?”

The sun was rising in the east, far above the trenches, and Aziraphale felt helpless in the face of it such sudden quiet. 

“Who wants to go back to mine, make this official?” Crowley said, and immediately Carol stepped forward. 

“Oh, no, no, no, love.” Kev put a hand on her shoulder, pushing her back. “You’re not walking out into No Man’s Land.” 

“It’s not No Man’s Land,” Carol said, “not right now, anyway.” She looked around her, seeing the dirty faces of the men gazing up, weapons still held at their side. She shook her short locks around her face and spread empty hands in front of her. “And they’ll be less likely to do anything rash when they see it’s just me.” 

“You don’t see anything up there,” Kev insisted. “You just sense movement, and you fire.” 

“I’ll be with her,” Aziraphale said. “We will help tend injuries, if there are any, as a gesture of good will.” 

Carol got on well with the German kids. She knew a few words, and was willing to learn more. Their side sent her over with some wine and scotch, and when she popped back up into No Man’s Land to wander back with guests, there were cheers all around. Carol, for her part, looked extremely pleased; her cheeks were reddened with delight, words coming soft and fast, stumbling over each other in excitement. She commanded everyone’s attention, and she was young once more. 

Aziraphale sat delicately on a crate to watch and Crowley passed him a bottle of something—he wasn’t sure what, since it tasted awful, but he drank it anyway. “It’s like she single-handedly stopped the whole damn war,” Crowley said, chuckling as they watched Carol’s animated hands, her whole body leaning into a story.

Aziraphale smiled softly. “But she didn’t,” he pointed out, without bitterness because the love here was everything right now. “They’ll be repercussions for this. Soldiers going off book and all. The ones on the front aren’t meant to be the ones who stop the fighting. Makes a mess of all their careful plans.” 

Crowley shifted towards him. “You’re not talking about—”

Aziraphale shook his head and heaved a small sob, though he couldn’t tell you where it came from, because he was happy. So _very_ happy that this small reprieve was possible, that this could be a thing that happened, however temporary. That two sides could sit together in the same trench in a way that made everything that had happened before seem so unnecessary. 

He dropped his head into his hands and let the tears soak his palms. The mute weeping was like a void he couldn’t touch. His soul was so full with the others’ joy, sweet and lovely, he could barely feel his own aching, definitely couldn’t understand it. He thought maybe he’d die like that, torn with longing and not sure what for, but he was suddenly surrounded by cold blissful darkness. The light and love were shuddered away from him for a small moment, and cool feathers brushed his cheek and neck. 

Aziraphale looked up to find Crowley scooted closer to him, so familiar now. He was surrounded by black wings, and then an arm around him, pulling Aziraphale’s head down to Crowley’s shoulder. 

“It won’t always be like this,” Crowley whispered, deep and dark. “It won’t always just be stolen moments. It’ll be different, one day.” 

Aziraphale could only nod into Crowley’s neck and let another sob break there, open now, raw, and feeling—oh thank God, he could feel it. 

**The Story of Tonight**

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” 

“That’s three, Angel.” Crowley snapped on a light as he led Aziraphale into his flat. “I feel like something’s wrong and if you don’t start telling me soon, I might have to take it personally.”

The tone was light, but Aziraphale could feel the concern. And to be fair, it was valid. He had managed to keep the bubbling fear from frothing to the surface on the bus back to town, stayed very still and quiet while Crowley drowsed on his shoulder, but the scent of asphalt and the first step onto the ink-black street made him wonder if he’d ever see another night on Earth, and he _couldn’t_. He couldn’t swallow around the terror anymore. It lodged there in his throat, along with a shaky grief he couldn’t explain, and oh God, it _hurt_. 

His corporation must be breaking in anticipation of it all because he felt like he needed to breathe, and couldn’t. The hard ball of fear appeared in his chest now, tightened, and he reached shaking hands to loosen his bowtie, alleviate the pressure, but wasn’t able to manage it. A cold sweat had broken out on the back of his neck, trickling down the collar of his shirt, chilling his skin as it did until his whole body was shuddering. He couldn’t even make it three steps into the flat before his knees gave.

Crowley caught him, eased him down, and then worked the bowtie. “Hey, hey, easy, Angel. Easy. Just… breathe, I guess. Breathe in. And out. That’s the way, right?” The demon squatted on his haunches in front of Aziraphale, fingers working the buttons on his shirt where Aziraphale’s failed, and the whole scene struck Aziraphale as comical in a kind of hysterical way. He huffed a laugh, but tears came to his eyes when he couldn’t quite make the sound. 

Crowley’s head flew up at the noise, horror plainly written on his face, all semblance of lightness gone. Aziraphale could have said many things about the demon’s perpetually misplaced emotions. Scared for _him._ Worried because an angel was _upset_. _Priorities, Crowley. We went rogue and humiliated Heaven and Hell. What do you think they’ll do about it?_

He would have said this, if he could catch his breath. Instead, he just huffed another laugh because it was still really quite funny, if you thought about it, and then he doubled over with the pain of lungs suddenly scraping for air they didn’t strictly need. 

“Fucking hell, Angel,” Crowley exclaimed, diving back and then forward again, all fidgeting hands not sure where they should land. “What are you doing? What’s wrong? How do I help?”

Aziraphale thought of Crowley’s eyes, bleeding with fear when he recognized Lucifer in the shaking of the earth, and managed to scrape a word out of his throat only because he was so, so tired of seeing Crowley terrified today. “Panicking,” the angel said. He’d seen it in the trenches, so many trenches; humans were always digging trenches, it seemed, in the soil of their countries, their families, their churches, themselves. And now he and Crowley had dug one, and he was drowning in it. Worse, _they_ were drowning in it.

The lines in Crowley’s forehead eased a bit; his fear wasn’t so heavy in the air now. “Okay,” Crowley said slowly, dropping his voice and placing his hands on Aziraphale’s face to lift it to his own. “Okay, I need you to focus. This okay? Right. I just—maybe we should count. Would counting help?”

Aziraphale stared at him for a long moment, gasping, and then nodded. The numbers rolled over Crowley’s tongue soft, and then like a dream he counted in French, and Japanese, and Latin, and all the languages melted together in a collage of their history until Aziraphale managed a deep, steadying breath. He leaned his forehead forward until it met Crowley’s shoulder and tried another. It hurt, but it was a good sort of burn, a grounding pain. 

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. 

“Fuck, Angel.” Crowley released a shuddering breath of his own. “I thought they were taking you right then.” 

Aziraphale closed his eyes against the warm fabric of Crowley’s shirt, feeling the thud of a pulse that shouldn’t really be there. He was just as scared as Aziraphale, and here he was only making a scene, making a mess of things. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else to say and he really, really was. He turned against his neck, feeling the demon swallow, and thought about how strange they were, necks. He’d never been here before, this close to Crowley. Not long enough to savor it anyway. He moved his nose further into the skin and breathed in the scent deeply. He might as well. How much more trouble could he get in, after all? He had nothing to lose. 

Oh. 

_Oh._

Crowley must have realized it at the same time he did, because a gentle hand came up to cup the back of Aziraphale’s head and hold him there to his shoulder. 

Aziraphale swallowed. “Crowley?” 

“Yeah, Angel?” Crowley’s voice was a fine sheet of glass; anything would shatter it. 

“Do you—do you still?”

He felt Crowley’s breath catch. “Yes. Yes, of course. Always.”

“Because I do, too. Always did. I should have said. I’ve just been afraid, but that—” He chuckled bitterly. “That doesn’t seem to matter now.” 

They were an undignified mess of limbs on a cold and unwelcoming floor, neither able to move or breathe, Aziraphale still shoved entirely into Crowley’s neck, Crowley’s hand tightening on his hair, as if afraid the angel will fly away at one wrong word.

“What do you want?” Crowley croaked, desperate.

Aziraphale didn’t want to think about that, but it was hard not to, hard not to feel viscerally aware of how unfair this all was. He gritted his teeth around the ache of it, pushing down a furious sob that threatened to burst forth. “I don’t want to go too fast,” he said, his voice shaking, threatening to spill over. He moved back, meeting a bit of resistance from Crowley’s hand before it gave way. “I want it slow. I want to savor you. But we might not get the chance, so.” He met Crowley’s gaze, reached up to remove the glasses and found the yellow eyes there blown wide, reflecting his own strangled frustration. “I want it all now.” 

Crowley beat him to it, although it was a near thing. The kiss stung, and their hands were clumsy on each other, pulling and pushing, all the panic shoved bodily underneath the physicality under each other. Every touch was a new sensation, too overwhelming, just right for forgetting everything else outside of them. 

Once Crowley had gained permission to touch him, it seemed like he couldn’t stop. Aziraphale felt hands sliding all over his body, felt himself being lifted from the floor and carried to a bedroom, and then Crowley’s body was a weight on his own. He was safe; he could breathe. And now he _knew_ why he was soft, what his heart was meant for. 

“Don’t cry, Angel,” Crowley’s voice was hushed above him and he wiped the tears from both of Aziraphale’s cheeks with his thumbs. “Not tonight. Please.” 

Aziraphale nodded and moved his head to the side, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. This was their eternity, this one night, and if it was all they ever got, that would be okay. He could make it everything they needed. 

**The Story of Tomorrow**

The clouds overhead were tinged with a bit of gray, and Crowley frowned up at them as if they were misbehaving plants. He straightened the collar of his shirt, then his tie, and then smoothed the creases in his trousers. Then he restarted the entire ritual, and paced a bit for good measure this time. 

“It’s ridiculous to be so nervous,” Anathema said, her gait purposeful and determined as she strode into the back bedroom that was Crowley’s designated ready spot. “The two of you defied Heaven and Hell to avert the apocalypse, but a silly human ritual like a wedding causes you to lose your nerves?” She thrust a manhandled, drooping bloom of lavender in his coat pocket and stood back while Crowley half-miracle’d, half-growled it back to radiance. 

“I’m not nervous,” he snapped. 

She peered up at him through her thick glasses. “Sure you’re not.” 

He pivoted around her and looked out the window again. “It’s just that I know the angel’s going to be livid if everything’s not perfect, so _it had better not rain, do you hear?_” The last part was more for the clouds’ benefit than hers.

And whether it was because of the shouting or just happenstance, the sun seemed to brighten, just a little bit. 

Crowley nodded, satisfied, and looked back at Anathema. 

“Are you going to wear those glasses for the ceremony?” he asked. 

“Are you?” she retorted. 

Crowley sniffed, shrugged his shoulders. “Mine are cool.” 

“Newt likes the way I look in these.” She straightened them on her ears and gazed at Crowley, nonplussed. “He told me so.” 

Crowley rolled his eyes. “He’d say you looked good with mouse ears and a lizard tail.” Then his face brightened. “Hey, do you want to try a little experi—”

“No,” Anathema answered firmly. “Besides, he has enough on his plate trying to handle your anxious husband.” She frowned, then corrected, “Husband-to-be.” 

And Newt indeed had a lot to handle with Aziraphale pulling away from his groping hands to look in the mirror, fiddle with a curl, take a nervous sip of a champagne he’d pre-opened in hopes it would calm him. 

“Do you think it’s too much?” he asked, turning to the hapless young man. “The lavender, I mean. I thought it would be nice, to match the tint of my bowtie, but, oh, well, he might just think it’s silly.” 

“I very much doubt Crowley would think anything you did was silly,” Newt said, following him in another attempt to help him into his waistcoat.

Aziraphale started to raise his arm to help, but then spun around, wagging his finger. “Oh, don’t be so sure. I know he indulges me. Why, I am positively certain he thought my jaunt over to France during the Revolution was quite ridiculous. He all but said.”

Newt shrugged and held up the coat hopefully. “I find some things about Anathema silly, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do all of them, just for the chance to be with her.”

Aziraphale softened into the sentiment, feeling like melted butter, and Newt took this chance to flit around him and try once more to help him into his coat. “That is so very kind, dear,” Aziraphale said, finally placing an arm through one of the sleeves. “I love to see humans so kind to each other.” 

“And—and I love to see angels and demons, you know. Be kind to each other. It’s quite nice. Quite different than I expected.” Newt helped him put the second arm through and stood back with a relieved sigh. Aziraphale was already walking away again, peeking through the window. 

“What a pleasant day!” he announced, turning around with a clap of his hands. “Are we ready, do you think?”

***

All of the children fidgeted in their seats, and Shadwell leaned forward to bop them on the heads until they quieted. Tracy handed them each a bit of candy as a peace offering, which helped none at all when it came to the fidgeting. 

Anathema’s garden had been cleared by Witchfinder Army, and Crowley even devoted a few of his best plants in service to the aesthetic. It was all worth it to watch Aziraphale’s delight when he arrived at the cottage, fingering the petals of a lilac, gleefully exclaiming over the shiny green leaf of a vivacious fern. 

Two rows of folding chairs were placed haphazardly by the Them to fit within the garden’s gates and Wensleydale had quite an epic playlist going featuring light rock hits of the 70s and 80s attached to a set of speakers set up on either side of the bird fountain, though so far all anyone could recall hearing was “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” on repeat. 

Crowley registered all of these little details through a fog, over which Anathema performed what he assumed to be the ceremony. Probably it was quite meaningful, but all Crowley could think about was Aziraphale in his impeccable lavender suit and bowtie, a perfect shade to offset the cream shirt underneath and his thick white curls. The angel stared at him, bright eyes shining, as if there were nothing else in the world to look at. Crowley’s heart seized somewhere in his throat and he realized his hands may have been grasping Aziraphale’s too tightly but he couldn’t find it within him to pull away. 

All too soon, Aziraphale was placing a slim silver ring on his finger, closed on the top with delicate wings, gentle and firmly protective.

“When I found you, I found what my heart was made for,” Aziraphale whispered, head bowed and flushed as he studied Crowley’s fingers entwined in his own. 

The fog was rising around his ears. The air was so dim and quiet, and his heartbeat was all he could hear. Crowley swallowed thickly as Anathema handed him a ring—his shaking hands didn’t feel like his own when he placed the piece of coiled gold on his angel’s finger, a snake curled up there to rest. 

He tried to say what they had practiced, those words they had said to each other so easily the night before he wore Aziraphale’s face to the gates of Heaven, the words they promised they’d say again, properly this time, when they returned. Because they would absolutely return. 

But he found nothing could get through the heat in his throat, and he was ashamed for it. He swallowed several more times, trying to dislodge the words, or any words—fair-weather friends, these words, abandoning you at the worst possible time.

Aziraphale steadied his hand over Crowley’s and leaned forward, turned to rest his forehead against Crowley’s cheek, his warm flesh like an anchor tethering him. “You’re okay,” the angel whispered, low into his ear. “We’re okay.”

Crowley breathed deep and made the words a part of him. It was true, and he didn’t think it would ever be. He never imagined a world where the Guardian of Eastern Gate and the Serpent of Eden would find a home among humans, a home with each other. All the destruction and suffering, the brightness and love, the histories lost to time and perhaps God, if She’s still paying attention—he would never have thought it could add up to this. But he had always wanted it to—just so, so badly. Now that it had, Crowley ached with the sort of profound love humans had invented, the kind that hurt with a centering pain which meant Heaven could not take this away. 

A human ritual, they had said, for their human love.

He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowed hard, and felt a hot tear escape from underneath his glasses. It slid beneath Aziraphale’s forehead where he rested it on Crowley’s cheek, hiding it away there. 

_ Please, God, let me keep this,_ he prayed. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, soft, when he felt it. 

Crowley cleared his throat and closed his hand over the ring on Aziraphale’s. “Angel, you are all the stars in the universe, and my soul is born anew with you.” 

Aziraphale leaned back again so Crowley could see the infectious smile growing on his angel’s face. 

“Oh for God’s sake, just kiss already!” Pepper yelled. “There’s cake waiting!” 

So Aziraphale took off Crowley’s glasses, flicked them to the side, and did just that. There was a steady clapping from their handful of audience, and Anathema smiled satisfactorily at a job well done, unaware the angel and demon had not heard a word of it. And the clouds released the showers they had been threatening all day, of course; they were always going to, but Crowley could only laugh, tears and rain both breaking on his face without distinction.

“Of course. I let my attention wander for a moment and it bloody well comes unglued.”

Aziraphale traced a thumb through the wetness on Crowley’s cheek. “What do you think, dear? Maybe it’s us God has been trying to drown all along,” he teased.

“Who knows,” Crowley growled. “Who cares. It hasn’t worked so far.” And just to prove it, he leaned back down to grasp Aziraphale’s face and kiss him again.

***

It’s a few millennia later when an angel and a demon sit on a tall mountain, overlooking the spot that might have once been the garden of Eden. No one is sure anymore, and they’d quite lost track of it themselves, over the years. Old age helps you forget these things. 

Meteors are raining down from the sky, and the last of humans have passed—into the sky, or into death. They are alone, an eternal vigil, in a roaring, deafening silence. No one has come for them. No one will. They were there for the first rain on the walls of Eden, and now they were here for the last. 

One turns to the other, a flickering shower of light gracing the sharp angles of his face. “Good, Angel?”

And the other turns, a softness that is now more nostalgic than anything, and smiles. “Oh, darling, it is good,” he says. “How can it not be, with you?”

And they rest, hand in hand, swimming strong underneath the crumbling sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. <3 Feel free to follow me on Tumblr @ [Terrible-Titles](https://terrible-titles.tumblr.com/). I love talking about this show a frankly ridiculous amount and my partner's wearing down real quick.


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